Economist: Job Gains Usually Follow Tough Recessions

While the unemployment rate jumped to 8.9 percent in April, good news looms on the horizon.

So says USC business school professor Delores Conway in an interview with Marketwatch.

“We have these boom periods, and then the economy typically goes into recession and wrings out some of the excesses that occurred,” she explains.

“Then it restructures. And then usually there are new industries that will lead us out of that recessionary period into the next boom.”

For example, out of the stagflation of the 1970s emerged the aerospace industry of the 1980s, and out of the recession of 1990-91 arose the technology boom.

Government policy can help, Conway says. “Policy can really stimulate the direction of the economy,” she points out.

“A good example is President Eisenhower’s support for the interstate freeway system. … It encouraged American to move out into suburbs more as well as to travel more, and it fueled the auto industry.”

In that vein, “the economic stimulus package is an important step in terms of testing out different sectors where there may be greater need or where it may actually fuel greater job growth,” Conway says.

The good news in the most recent employment data is that job losses are slowing — to 539,000 in April from 681,000 just two months earlier.

“The most intense spate of weakness is probably behind us,” Michael Darda, chief economist at MKM Partners, tells The New York Times.

While the unemployment rate jumped to 8.9 percent in April, good news looms on the horizon.So says USC business school professor Delores Conway in an interview with Marketwatch.“We have these boom periods, and then the economy typically goes into recession and wrings out...